


Forget

by DeCarabas



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Rivalry, this is decidedly not my usual hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4643247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the blanks in a rivaled Anders' memory.</p><p>Cole once said, "The forgetting was for both sides. They weren’t frightened by me, and I wasn’t hurt by them. Making people forget was a defense against people attacking me and having what they saw in me stick."</p><p>Cole's not the only spirit who needs to defend himself sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget

The Fade sings and shapes itself around the thoughts and memories of dreaming minds, and a spirit of justice pores over them, fascinated, drawn in by intensity of their loves, their pains, their deep and gnawing sense of having been wronged. He spirals through their secondhand emotions, tries them on, becomes them; becomes a perfect recreation of the soldier dying on the battlefield, takes on her name and her attachments and her dying wish to see things put right.

And when she’s done what she can, when the injustice of her death has been remembered and spoken and acted upon, she lets the memories go, lets the attachments wash away clean. This is the way of things.

 _Forget_.

And he is Justice again.

* * *

The mortal world is incomprehensible, too much and too little all at once, restricting and overwhelming, and Kristoff’s memories are a map through the chaos. It would be so easy to wrap himself in those memories, to simply be Kristoff. But this is not the Fade, and the rules are different here.

Demons lose themselves in the memories of the corpses they inhabit, and he is not a demon.

And Aura looks upon him with horror, and he is not her husband. He is not honoring her husband. He is a desecration, however unwilling.

And though every memory of Kristoff’s is precious, a desperately needed guide to this strange world, he picks and chooses. He singles out the memories that sing to him the strongest, the ones that tell him he belongs at Aura’s side.

 _Forget_.

And he remains Justice.

* * *

The trees are burning by his own magic, and he stands over the bodies of wardens and templars with the taste of blood on his lips.

_I never meant for this to happen._

He’s not sure which side of himself he means by that.

But he’d been caught up in the intensity of the emotions of a living body, his own living body with its instinctual desires to bite down, devour, to fight with tooth and claw—but he’s always had a body, he’s _Anders;_ he’d been overwhelmed by the single-minded intensity of the Fade, and the templar who died here was not simply a templar, the warden who feared him was not simply a warden, they were the latest manifestations of injustice, of fear, of sloth, countless wrongs echoing through the ages, like a filter over his perception—

There is a sickness rising in his stomach, and he doesn’t know who he is, and he has to wash away this confusion filling his head.

 _Forget_.

The trees are burning, and he stands over the bodies of wardens and templars with the taste of blood on his lips, and there is a hole in his memory.

* * *

“This is Anders’ decision, not yours,” Hawke says to him, and with those words, his sense of reality slides out from under him.

“I _am_ Anders!”

Isn’t he?

There’s only disbelief in Hawke’s eyes, accusation, _abomination_ , and he can’t trust his own thoughts, howling at him that maybe he’s wrong, he’s lost himself, lied to himself; he’s a demon, corrupted, stolen Anders’ memories, stolen his life, twisted it—

It's not true, he knows it isn't, but Hawke’s gaze is full of condemnation and Anders’ mind—Justice’s mind— _his_ mind is writhing with doubts that he can’t afford, not now; and he reaches out in desperation to preserve what sense of reality he has left.

_Forget._

Anders' memory is filling with holes, and he doesn't understand why.


End file.
